The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

The British are coming.
Speech accepting an Oscar for his ‘Chariots of Fire’ screenplay, 30 March 1982, in ‘Sight & Sound’ Summer
1982
11.45 Orson Welles 1915-85
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—they
produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had
brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce...? The
cuckoo clock.
‘The Third Man’ (1949 film; words added by Welles to the script, in Graham Greene and Carol Reed ‘The
Third Man’ (1969) p. 114)
To his associate, Richard Wilson...Orson [Welles] then declared, ‘This [the RKO studio] is the
biggest electric train set any boy ever had!’
Peter Noble ‘The Fabulous Orson Welles’ (1956) ch. 7
11.46 Duke Of Wellington 1769-1852
Beginning reform is beginning revolution.
Mrs Arbuthnot’s Journal, 7 November 1830
Up Guards and at them again!
Letter from Captain Batty 22 June 1815, in Booth ‘Battle of Waterloo’, also Croker ‘Correspondence and
Diaries’ (1884) 3, 280
Not upon a man from the colonel to the private in a regiment—both inclusive. We may pick up
a marshal or two perhaps; but not worth a damn.
On being asked whether he calculated upon any desertion in Buonaparte’s army, in ‘Creevey Papers’ ch. 10,
p. 228
It has been a damned serious business—Blücher and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a
damned nice thing—the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life...By God! I don’t think it
would have done if I had not been there.
Referring to the battle of Waterloo, in ‘Creevey Papers’ ch. 10, p. 236
All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you
don’t know by what you do; that’s what I called ‘guessing what was at the other side of the hill’.
‘The Croker Papers’ (1885) vol. 3, p. 276
When I reflect upon the characters and attainments of some of the general officers of this army,
and consider that these are the persons on whom I am to rely to lead columns against the French,
I tremble; and as Lord Chesterfield said of the generals of his day, ‘I only hope that when the
enemy reads the list of their names, he trembles as I do.’
Dispatch to Torrens, 29 August 1810 (usually quoted as ‘I don’t know what effect these men will have upon
the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me’, and also attributed to George III)
I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life.
On seeing the first Reformed Parliament, in Sir William Fraser ‘Words on Wellington’ (1889) p. 12
You must build your House of Parliament upon the river: so...that the populace cannot exact